An Interview with Artist Phil Epp

Born in Henderson, Nebraska, on August 28, 1946, Phil Epp became an artist, graduated from Bethel College in 1972, and taught art in the Newton public school system for 30 years, retiring in May 2003. In the evolution of his art practice, his paintings have become widely known; his work is now available in galleries in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico; Chicago, Illinois; Kansas City, Missouri; and Tubac, Arizona; and in municipal settings with several recent large-scale, sculptural, collaborative public art projects. This interview was conducted August 27, 2003, at Epp's studio east of Newton, Kansas, a structure added three years ago to the home he shares with his wife, art teacher Karen Epp, two children Kate and Justin (when they were younger), three horses, and a dog. The home and studio are set on 16 acres, and Phil and Karen designed it in relation to the Spanish-influenced architecture of the American Southwest.

I. Land, Community, and the Aesthetics of the Weather

Phil Epp in his studio(photo provided by Phil Epp)

John Thiesen: In what ways was Henderson, Nebraska a place that was conducive to
producing art and artists and in what ways was it not supportive of art and artists?

Phil Epp: That's a really big, broad question. As far as art is concerned, my parents were
encouraging of my drawing. They also had an aesthetic sense about the land that I think
was important. The wide-openness of the landscape and my parents' interest in the
aesthetics of the weather was really significant

JT: So in some ways, you would say the geography, as much as, or more than, the
human community, was a factor.

Epp home in Henderson, Nebraska, late 1950s(photo provided by Phil Epp)

PE: There were individuals in the community who were very supportive. Basically
we're talking Mennonites here, so we're talking music, and I didn't fit that.

JT: Was there an art program at the high school level?

PE: Not at the high school level. I remember an elementary school teacher, Evelyn Regier. The aesthetic
interest was always there, whether I was working with horses, or school or whatever. As
far as doing art I don't think that was really nurtured until I met Bob Regier [professor of
art at Bethel College]. He was very influential. But not the first person I had met who did
art; I also had a cousin who did art, Judy Mierau, and she was a big inspiration too. But the community
as a whole focused on music. The community as a society may have thought that visual
art was a frivolous kind of talent to have.

JT: Did you go directly from high school to Bethel?

PE: I did.

JT: What years were you at Bethel?

PE: 1965 — I went for 2-3 years. That was the time of the draft, so I went into the
alternative service and was married then, and did service for a couple of years, and then I
came back. I ended up graduating in 1972.

JT: Who was teaching art then?

PE: Bob Regier, Paul Friesen, and Mike Almanza.

Ami Regier: So what happened next? How did you find your way into a life of art?

PE: Well, then I went looking for a job as a teacher and stayed with that for 30 some
years. Yes, I was always an art teacher. Then, a lot of times the question came up, should
I get my master's? I always kind of balked. First of all, I didn't want to. I didn't want to
go to school. I didn't want to spend the time or money or energy. Now, this being my
first year of retirement, I've thought oftentimes that people plan only for their careers,
but they don't plan beyond their careers. So I'm really kind of glad I didn't get my
master's. That energy went into art. Working on art took the energy that I had.

JT: What relationship was there in your experience between teaching middle-school art
and the art that you're actually producing on your own?

PE: In the earlier years of my teaching career, I often connected the two. In the second
half, I deliberately separated the two. They were two different worlds. They were kind of nice
because my skills continued to be in practice, because I was working with students and
art and all that, so they supported each other pretty well, but I didn't usually blend them.
I didn't bring my work into the classroom for years. When the work started selling, I also
became worried about conflict of interest. For instance, what if I did a painting
demonstration in class, and then later sold it? I thought I could get in trouble with it some
way or another, so I kept them pretty separate.

JT: For many art teachers, it is very difficult to be active in producing their own work.
How did that turn out differently for you?

PE: It was always my interest and passion, and I had ideas to express. It was where I
could best express myself, so I just always did it. I was always interested. I think a lot of
people are experimental with their art work, especially teachers: they want to dabble in
various media and see what happens in each. I focused on the image.
Later I got more interested in sculptural media, but I always knew I was a painter.
Lately, I've become more interested in the 3-dimensional aspect.

II. Public Art

AR: I've come to the conclusion, and I want to check it with you, that I think you seem
to be in a new stage in your art where you're placing your art in public contexts, in some
cases in the landscape, or in very public civic areas that cause the human community to
have a new relationship with art. I'd like to know how you think the human community
interacts with your art.

PE: Yes, this art is recent, actually. Most of the projects have been cooperative projects
with other artists, and that has been a new experience. So those two things, working
with public art, and working cooperatively with other artists, have developed in the
last three-four years. I think part of that came about because of my interest in sculpture.
Here's the idea: my interest in sky as open space or openness. It's you with the
natural landscape, just the juxtaposition of the artificial and the natural, when the
artificial represents the natural.

AR: I do think about that [the artificial/natural juxtaposition] every time I see the Blue
Sky Project.

PE: I thought of this the other day: I had the sketch I did 20 years ago: it was just a skyscape that was in front of some foliage—a hole you could cut out of a foliage and see
the sky. That image and what you could do with solid sky, interested me.

You had asked how the projects came about. Terry Corbett (ceramic tile artist,
Wichita, KS) and I had done a ceramic tile wall mural in Eldorado, KS, about five years
ago. And then we did a small mural together here on Main Street, [above the Scrapbook
Gallery at 504 N. Main] and Terry Corbett has been involved in most of these projects.
We worked together on most of these things, and they [the owners] determined what they
wanted.

Mural in El Dorado, Kansas. In a very narrow alley just north of the Coutts art museum on Main Street.(photo by John D. Thiesen)

And then the Blue Sky project came up, and that was a monumental project. It
was an eye-opener for all kinds of things.

AR: How did you have the courage to propose Blue Sky Project to the municipality?

PE: That's one of the lessons: have a lot of coffee. I
think the artist has to be the aggressor, because art isn't something that people necessarily
prioritize. So I have a somewhat aggressive attitude, and the galleries I've dealt with have required an
aggressive attitude. Survival: You can't be passive in art and survive. Subtlety
doesn't cut it as far as art is concerned.

My approach is that I develop a model, and show a potential audience what I want to
do, and if it doesn't happen, I still have this wonderful idea that I developed. And it
doesn't really matter whether they accept it or they don't; we went through the process
of the model and anr idea, and we're making art the way we hoped to make it. And so
I got on that kick: we made the model. We proposed it to a committee, and there were
some helpful people who wanted to see it come about. Blue Sky project was
initially tied to the baseball diamond on First Street. That was an interesting phenomena:
the sports complex was eventually cut, but the art project was pretty much committed, so
the foundation had changed. That's when we got the place over there (the current site on
Kansas Avenue by Centennial Park). That was a long process.

JT: In some ways, my feeling was that the Athletic Park location [on First Street] was
more central and more visible. Aesthetically, the new location may be better because it is
more open.

PE: I like this location. Aesthetically, it is a better location. Also, the ideal was to have
this thing sky against sky, and that happens here. But some people thought it ought to
be more central, or on the highway where people would see it more frequently.

AR: Once the Blue Sky Project began to be tied into the signage in the community,
perhaps there is potential to cause a recentering of the community. This site would
become a kind of center.

PE: That's kind of what we were thinking. Some little things, that happened not because
of this, nevertheless have contributed: the recent building projects including the Walgreens store, the Quick Trip, and development
this direction including some of those town houses [on Twelfth Street], have increased the urban density neary the project.

Another reason, the [current] location [is important]: . .Well, back up. . .in the
whole process [of the discussion of Blue Sky project], some contact with the Sand Creek
restoration project by the corps of engineers developed. There was an archeologist who
came down from Arizona, and I got to know him, and he would take me around. He was
intrigued by the [current] location; he said there were four distinct civilizations that lived
in the area. Native Americans, 500 years ago: it was a real hub. Then it was the initial land fill 100 years ago [for
Newton]. The third stage was the landfill 30 years ago, covered, and then, fourth, the current
culture and use.

Then he was really intrigued with how this is the perfect spot to show what
happens with rivers. First, trade and commerce and so on, and then it turned into this
waste area-dumping ground, then the recreational area reclaims the waste area.

JT: The site could become an archeological park, with an excavation.

PE: That's another thing we talked about: some sort of excavation with a space to walk
through with both sides lined with plexiglass to see the layers; rubbish, etc.

JT: That would be another kind of thing for the people who are against most projects to
react to. How do you respond to that political aspect of public art? I'm asking both about the political aspect of public art in general, in almost any situation, but
certainly it's prominent here in Newton because there's an anti-faction in this
community.

PE: The anti-faction is raising objections to almost everything. I suppose there are
people not in the anti-faction who would be against public art because they would see it
as a low priority. I'm on the side of public art, plain and simple. I think it's important. I
think that a lot of people can get some use out of it. A lot of it [its value] isn't immediate.
Down the road, people will see it as pretty neat.

JT: Do you think that Harvey County has a deficit of public art, or are we typical?

PE: We probably are typical, but the sculpture that we did kicked it up quite a ways
because of the scale.

JT: How did the use of your characteristic clouds become part of the city signage logo?

PE: Very simply. They were working on that in the city manager's office, and they were
going to make some signs. I said, I'll make a painting for you if you want, so I went
home that afternoon and made a little painting, and brought it in the next day or two days
later. She asked what size they were going to be. There are
many signs now. I really like them. I didn't get
anything out of it, but I thought it would be more detrimental in the long run to have poor
signage.

Newton city directional sign based on Phil Epp design;this one is north of 12th and Main.(photo by John D. Thiesen)

JT: The Blue Sky Project is a bit different from the other projects because it involved the
city. How did the other projects evolve?

PE: The little mural above the Scrapbook Gallery was commissioned by the owner.
Terry Corbett was interested in it, even though it was a small project and can't be seen
from directly below, and is a little more literal in interpretation. There's a train motif
because of the history of the Santa Fe Chief train line, which was also the name of the
theater that once occupied that very building. It used to be called the Chief Theater, and the history was important. Dick
McCall owns the building, and he was one of the most influential people behind Blue
Sky.

PE: No, he keeps a low profile, but he's very persistent, with a strong interest in Newton,
and doing whatever he can to help this place. He was hands-down the biggest influence
besides Lloyd Smith, who provided the funds for it.

Another project now developing is the City of Olathe project ("Reflective Spaces", R. R. Osborne Plaza Sculpture): it's a public
art project that is exciting in a lot of ways. It's another sculpture. [Gesturing] this is the
initial model we presented. It was interesting how it came about. The agent wanted us to
do basically two slabs in mural form. I didn't want to make a flat surface, in a three-dimensional park, like a billboard with pictures on it. Sitting in a meeting, I had an idea
to separate these things in this way. It will be more of a landscape, an Olathe landscape . .
. The thing that makes it interesting to me is that the pieces bisect the landscape at angles;
they aren't going to be flat. Light will hit them different ways at different times, with
stones and sky and stuff in between the images. With the
base it will be 17-18 feet tall.

PE: This was a compromise. They wanted landscape, so we had to do landscape. The
twist comes in, in my opinion, here: the idyllic landscape, which is the way the
land looks like west of Olathe, but now, with all the urban development, the landscape has
a fragmented look. To me, this works as an art piece because the fragmentation is honest.

AR: The fragments are true to the landscape as it has been developed.

PE: The form of fragmentation is symbolic in a lot of ways.

JT: The obvious thing I would say about it, as a non-artist, is that you don't generally
make a habit of drawing trees.

PE: Right. But notice these are interesting trees - they look like dark green clouds.
[Laughs.] The same shape as my clouds.

[All of us now moved to another table in the studio to examine a model.]

AR: This must be the model for another new project you are now developing, at the
Newton Medical Center, in the rotunda of the new Medical Office Plaza.

PE: This was the space, and I made a lot of quick decisions on how to deal with it. The
first idea was to make one landscape that would go all the way around, but I didn't like
that idea much. So I ended up with a variety of landscapes, all different, but at different
times of day or in different seasons. There is a little bit of a method to it: the images are
of things you would associate with northern or southern or southwest views, sundown,
sunrise, but I'm not trying to necessarily make it a decorative interior design piece that
fits nicely on the wall. There are eight different paintings, and there will be a little border.

JT: Entrance?

PE: Rotunda area.

JT: Is this space behind up against the wall?

PE: It will come away from the wall, leaving about 3-4 inches of space. It's not
freestanding, there is building around here. Open, 3-4 are doors. Basically open space,
another floor above, plus a skylight above. This is the scale: 6 foot person.

I think it will be nice. I think it will be pretty neat. Mark Andres is working on the
structure, using masonite structures for the paintings.. Round space creates problems: you
can't stretch canvas on concave surface. I think we're either going to use adhesive to
attach the canvas, or we may not use canvas at all.

What do you think about the idea of having different paintings? Does your eye
want to see the same motif all the way around?

JT: The fact that it is broken up into segments by its structure [since the hospital space not a continuous
space] makes it logical that there would be different images. If the hospital rotunda itself
were one unbroken surface, it might make sense to blend around.

PE: Then I think whether I want the design to take over my work. However, this is where
I'm at right now. Some pieces I really like right now include the night sky. I want some
variation. A dramatic landscape next to a more subtle one. I want to break it up.

III. Subject Matter and "the Social Link": Categories and Questions

JT: There are two other directions of questions I might note: One would be to ask about artists who aren't well known but who might well be good artists; for example, Vernon Friesen is an artist in Henderson, Nebraska,
and is not widely known in galleries, yet does interesting bronzes, somewhat in the Frederic Remington tradition. One direction of questions would
be whether we can name and identify Mennonite artists, and what is the difference between those who are well known and less known. We might think of others whom we should interview in the future in
Mennonite Life. The other set of questions occurs to me as we try to put this article together
for Mennonite Life: Do you have any reflections as we put the two categories together,
"artist," and "Mennonite," do they have any significance, or are they purely coincidental?

PE: Vernon Friesen was a friend of mine growing up. He was a year younger than me. I
can't think of too many other Mennonite artists in the region: Robert Regier, Arlie
Regier, Paul Friesen, Conrad Snider.

That's a great question. I have seen several publications describing a
body of Mennonite art. My work as well as some of the other work I've seen in them
seemed pretty weak to me. It's either pretty academic, or it's just flat. Lacking in energy.
It's either academic, coming right out of school and doesn't usually go beyond that, or
it's based in the past. That's not true of all; I've also seen amazing stuff. Again, part of it is. . . well, you go back to how the visual arts have just not been promoted very much. I
don't want to blame the religious aspect, but it goes back to the graven image problem, I
suppose . . .

AR: Perhaps it's time for a renaissance now.

PE: Perhaps, in that area. I think Mennonites
have a tendency to do things in a practical fashion rather than pushing the envelope (in terms of scale and aggressiveness). The primary push is toward human services. . . . Mennonites and art. We had difficulty
coming up with a list of names: we only came up with a few.

AR: Do you currently have a congregational home?

PE: Yes, First Mennonite, but we are not very active.

JT: Is it an art friendly congregation?

PE: I'm not too interested in hanging out with art-friendly Mennonites. This is why I like
the regionalists. I
don't expect to go to church and talk about art. I'm not even a fan of people performing
in church. I don't even necessarily think it's appropriate for people to perform in church. I like the people, and I like the church, and I have a lot of respect for them, and I'm not sure why we don't go. We'll probably go
back again sometime soon.

JT: Does the phrase "Mennonite artist" or "Mennonite art" make any sense?

PE: It would be like the phrase "Native American art." It's more nostalgic, than it is
anything else.1 What is Mennonite, anyway? We go to strip malls and shopping malls and
everything like everyone else anyway. I don't know. Would the art be a place to find a
Mennonite identity?

AR: I very much appreciate the idea that it's problematic to claim exactly what a
Mennonite is. Literary writers /novelists currently keep complicating what identity is.

JT: It's interesting that you mention the phrase "Native American art" when thinking of
Mennonite art, to compare, because there you can see a stereotype of nostalgic or cheaply
popularized form of art, but on the other hand, you would find artists who are Native
American and would say that aspect of their identity is something they bring to their
artwork in some way. There's a variety of ways you can think about binding the adjective
to art and artists.

PE: I can't think of many Mennonite artists.

JT: Another name that's been brought up in the area is Nathan Hart. He has been
influenced by both Cheyenne and Mennonite backgrounds.

PE: This is what I find at school. Everything is related to ethnicity. And the fact that his
art would be intriguing because it would have to do with both Mennonite and Cheyenne backgrounds.
But is his art any good? I'm just skeptical. When periodicals feature artists because a
figure is African American, the artist is significant because of being African American.
That's fine, but I would like to see the art come first. The other aspect is incidental, the
political correctness of the background. What do you think?

AR: I'm interested in hybrid definitions of identity that stretch beyond historical
definitions, if I'm to figure out how to live and work at a Mennonite institution. I'm
interested in the problems that surround the question, because I find myself
uncomfortable with narrow definitions of `Mennonites' while working at a Mennonite
institution. I also think that ethnicity is one viable category with which to track historical
angles and influences, but I agree that it can have unfortunate nostalgic effects.

JT: What I would say is that identity isn't a property but rather a process by which a person identifies, but also,
what others identify that person with, so it's interesting to look into or under the various
ways people identify being part of a certain category. So when odd or unusual
combinations occur, then I'm curious if there's any significance to those combinations of
categories in how these people identify themselves or are identified, categorized by
others.

PE: We keep bringing it back to the social link, but I think art making is a little bit
removed from the social aspect. I don't want to emphasize social service images in my art.

JT: Another way of asking a parallel question would be something along the lines of
replacing the ethnic adjective with a geographical adjective. Are you a Plains artist or a
Southwestern artist? Are you a Nebraska or Kansas artist?

PE:That's more important. That's a good point.

[Gesturing]: Painting-wise, this is a painting with substance, and some sense of
human reaction, but no pin-pointable references to native American or Mennonite
elements.

AR: You're saying these paintings are not so much about cultural ideas.

PE: Human presences, but not specific ones. More rural ones, if anything. I'm a rural artist.

JT: [Gesturing to a painting]: Thinking of geography, realism and so on, this painting
jumps out at as more Eastern New Mexico. Not Nebraska or central Kansas.

PE: I grew up overlooking a big basin, a low land area where water would collect. We
had a quarter section pasture. Prairie, actually: it was different from a pasture. No
buildings for a few miles. Pretty open space; I always liked the plains. I can see that this
painting does look a bit more like eastern New Mexico; most of the time I don't really
identify them as belonging to a certain place. They develop as their own location. Usually
they have a little mix of New Mexico and Kansas in them.

Epp home in Henderson today(photo provided by Phil Epp)

Epp home in Henderson today(photo provided by Phil Epp)

[Gesturing to another painting]: This one is about back side of a sign, a billboard,
a perfect structure, set against a landscape. At first it was against a vibrant skyscape, but
they were conflicting so I deadened back the sky. This one is interesting because it kind
of makes the viewer ask what is on the other side, what it is advertising, but it doesn't
offer any clues. It is interesting visually.

Billboard, 30x40(photo provided by Phil Epp)

AR: There is something ironic and funny about painting the back of a billboard.

You're looking at another kind of space, not organized by regional geography. The
billboard is set by a cliff, like a billboard at the end of the world, but even then you can't
see what's on it.

Post Hole Digger(photo provided by Phil Epp)

PE: I don't mean anything negative. Does it do what I want it to do? I began a close-up
of a post-hole digger. It's almost a pop art image, or something like one. I did another
painting of an old car with a lighted Christmas star on top, from Burns, Kansas. I like
those kinds of images that have the capacity to be symbolic.

Box Car, 24x30(photo provided by Phil Epp)

AR: Christmas stars and old cars: On the one hand, I sense in your work a little bit of
the sacred landscape, but on the hand also a little bit of surrealism, a little bit of pop art. The
Blue Sky sculpture seems to share the ethos of Rene Magritte's famous This is Not a
Pipe, by putting an image of a sky up against a sky.

PE: Yes, there's a certain sense of humor.

JT: It is a surrealist image to cut a hole in foliage to see the sky.

PE: Magritte did some of that too. Also, everything that I've done has been in some way
or other before. Wayne Thiebaud is a California artist that is still living, that had images of
pies in a glass pie case. He currently has a show at the Kemper Museum [in Kansas City,
MO].

I like looking at billboard signs. The structure of it is what I find interesting: the
front side is all smooth and shiny, and now they're even covered with vinyl that wraps
around and ties up, so they don't even paint them any more. But the back side has all
kinds of different structures. Next time you go to a major highway, just look at the back
sides. Brace supports. They are almost always tacky, as if they didn't measure them.
Some of them have a real elaborate structure; what keeps them up in that wind is
amazing. Sometimes you just do things for fun. This one I did for fun.

IV. Let's Talk about Kansas Art: Influences, History, and Teter Rock

JT: Another angle of question we started on before a bit when we talked about less known artists such as Vernon Friesen, and also when you said before about
art with ethnic labels on it that you want to ask, is it good art?

PE: You want to ask me, "What is good art?"

JT: No, it's more political than that. What sort of status hierarchy in the art world is
your involvement? If I go to Taos, and walk around in galleries, and I see a Phil Epp
painting, I think that is supposed to impress me, and I think he must be a really important artist. But as a non-artist I don't really
know whether I'm seeing important art. Two things are going on here: What's
good art, and what's the status hierarchy, among people who are knowledgeable about
art, who buy and sell art?

PE: That's a good question, but I'm not sure how to answer it. There are several status
tiers. First there are really significant artists with well-known names. Then there would
be another group of artists with New York connections. So there are several levels of art.
Status? Is that your question?

JT: Yes, does status have to do with how good the art is; how does that relate to how
people relate to the art world and art market?

PE: You could say that there are five tiers of significant art, based on visual impact or
even price. Or you could say there are two or three. I think there are regional groups.

JT: There is a hierarchy at the national level, and then another one in the category of
Southwestern artists if that's how people label you.

PE: There would even be a hierarchy of Kansas artists.

JT: I doubt if people come in from the outside and say that they want a Kansas painting,
— or maybe they do—I don't know. They might come in and say they want Southwest
art.

PE: Even Kansas art has a long history. People just go nuts over Birger Sandzen
paintings now. There are paintings by him that are worth a quarter of a million dollars
now. Let's talk about Kansas art.

[All of us now moved to the library adjacent to the studio. In February-May 2000, the Kauffman Museum in North Newton, Kansas, had an exhibit titled "Drawn from the Plains: American Regionalist Art, 1925-1950" which featured prints, drawings, and paintings from the Phil and Karen Epp collection, some of which were on display in the library.]

Here is a Kansas magazine from the 1930s. Art was pretty significant in the 1930s
here through the community murals by the WPA and that sort of thing. This is an early
record of some of the early Kansas artists (from the turn of the century and on.)

[Looking at books:] Here's another significant book on the effect of the realists
on the state—Thomas Hart Benton, John Stuart Curry. The "prairie printmakers" were
Wichita-based and also joined with artists throughout the country. Kansas was a pivotal
place in the country for people making prints in the 1930s. People from Taos would come
up and have artwork printed here. A number of publications have come out of KU on
Grant Wood, Sandzen, Curry, Benton.

AR: What are the particular lines of Kansas art that have influenced you?

PE: All the realists influenced me,2 among other influences: Benton, Curry. And there was some overlap: Ward
Lockwood was a New Mexico artist who was born in Kansas. He was a significant New
Mexico artist. He came to Kansas, started abstraction, from a pretty realistic starting
point. He has Kansas roots. Quite a few of the New Mexico artists have Kansas roots.
Part of that has to do with the Santa Fe railroad and just the intrigue with the Southwest.
But there's quite a connection between the Southwest and Kansas art. Many of these were swallowed up by modernism. Others adapted and updated their realism to modernism.

AR: I recognize Teter Rock [looking at a painting by Phil Epp leaning against a wall].

Teter Rock, 40x30 acrylic on board(photo provided by Phil Epp)

Teter Rock, north face, Dec. 2003, Greenwood County, Kansas(photo by John D. Thiesen)

Teter Rock, south face, Dec. 2003(photo by John D. Thiesen)

View southwest from Teter Rock, Dec. 2003(photo by John D. Thiesen)

PE: I have to tell you a story about Teter Rock. Two-three weeks ago, a Chicago dealer
came through, who handles some of my work, but who handles mostly older stuff,
regionalist, too. An urbanite, intrigued about the Midwest, partly because of the
art he deals in. I thought I'd take him to Teter Rock, 20 miles east of Cassoday.

It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those hundred-degree days.
We walked around. Then we went back to the car, but it wouldn't start. We hadn't seen a
human being all afternoon, and were 20-30 miles from Cassoday. We hadn't seen another
car since we left Cassoday.

We didn't have cell phones or anything, but the reality hadn't hit me that we really
might be stuck out here. I finally realized I was using my wife's car key to the other car.
Finally we made it back, but I don't think he'll speak to me again. You don't think about
some place being remote until you're stranded.

I'll show you
some of these others [Kansas artists]. This is Curry, the one who has the statehouse
murals. Here's someone else I really like, William Dickerson. I think he'll be getting
some press in the next few years; the agent from Chicago was interested in his work. He
was a real genuine kind of realist; he really was interested in Kansas. His prints are just
wonderful.

This is Dale Nichols - not a Kansas artists particularly. Most of these people
work with this prairie group of artists. That was an influential piece: "Cloud," by John
Roger Cox. I did some research on him in an art history class at WSU. Interesting
individual, with quite a bit of turmoil in his life: he ended up being an alcoholic. Dealers
are more and more interested in rural imagery. I think that, like Southwest Art, Kansas is
gaining a lot of interest, partly because of its history in art.

This painting here is another one of those original prairie printmakers, but this one
is a little more modernist. Modernism pretty much shut most of them down. They were
working in a regionalist mode, and then abstraction ruled from 1950 to the present,
practically.

It's just now that they are going back and digging out this stuff that got stuffed
away during that time. This little painting I just got recently is by Lester Raymer, another
important Kansas artist. Have you been to the Red Barn
Studio in Lindsborg? You've got to go. In many ways he was a lot better as a painter than
Sandzen. He did a lot of religious subject matter too, so he'd be an interesting one to
study. He died in 1991.

AR: This is quite a collection of Kansas art you've got here.

PE: Yes, it keeps growing and changing a little bit.

AR: How does your process work? How much time do you spend out in the landscape?
Do you take photos?

PE: I take a lot of photos. I don't usually paint on location. I draw on location some
times. Then I come back and concoct it, based on what I know, what I like to see,
and what's expected of the picture, or what's going on at the time.

AR: How would you describe how the landscape works for you compositionally? How
did the low horizon line and gradations of colors in the sky evolve?

PE: Those aspects evolved and became refined over the years. Depth is created by
darker color at top of the composition. When teaching art, one is always teaching
perspective. That affected my work. The low horizon gets you kind of looking up. Low
horizon is something that, talking about Kansas and Midwestern painters, influenced me
in the 1970s. I remember Keith Jacobshagen, who I met once or twice. He was an instructor at
Nebraska, and was one of the first artists that I remember shoving the horizon line way
down. I remember going to one of his shows at Ruben Saunders Gallery in Wichita and
thinking wow, that's pretty neat. And so, I think that's where I started shoving the
landscape down. He was a part of a school of landscape painters at the time, and he did
that. It worked for me to shove the horizon line down quite a ways because it became
more about sky than about land.

JT: Would a person who is not from the plains say that it intimidates the viewer?

PE: You mean the sky [intimidates the viewer]?

JT: Because the viewer has to look up at the monolith (Blue Sky Project) or the sky?

PE: I don't know. It might not seem natural for some viewers. It might seem long to
some viewers. Compositions are more usually divided into thirds.

AR: How is retirement?

PE: It gives me time to get stuff done, but I'm not really retired. I have to make this art
work. I'm not in a position to sit back and not be productive.

JT: How did you make the decision to retire?

PE: Early retirement was the obvious option, so I could continue to earn a portion of my
salary, which was wonderful. I wasn't burned out: I was tired of the
same activities. Later on I felt I was on a treadmill. Now it's kind of like I just graduated
from college.

I. Land, Community, and the Aesthetics of the Weather

Phil Epp in his studio(photo provided by Phil Epp)

John Thiesen: In what ways was Henderson, Nebraska a place that was conducive to
producing art and artists and in what ways was it not supportive of art and artists?

Phil Epp: That's a really big, broad question. As far as art is concerned, my parents were
encouraging of my drawing. They also had an aesthetic sense about the land that I think
was important. The wide-openness of the landscape and my parents' interest in the
aesthetics of the weather was really significant

JT: So in some ways, you would say the geography, as much as, or more than, the
human community, was a factor.

Epp home in Henderson, Nebraska, late 1950s(photo provided by Phil Epp)

PE: There were individuals in the community who were very supportive. Basically
we're talking Mennonites here, so we're talking music, and I didn't fit that.

JT: Was there an art program at the high school level?

PE: Not at the high school level. I remember an elementary school teacher, Evelyn Regier. The aesthetic
interest was always there, whether I was working with horses, or school or whatever. As
far as doing art I don't think that was really nurtured until I met Bob Regier [professor of
art at Bethel College]. He was very influential. But not the first person I had met who did
art; I also had a cousin who did art, Judy Mierau, and she was a big inspiration too. But the community
as a whole focused on music. The community as a society may have thought that visual
art was a frivolous kind of talent to have.

JT: Did you go directly from high school to Bethel?

PE: I did.

JT: What years were you at Bethel?

PE: 1965 — I went for 2-3 years. That was the time of the draft, so I went into the
alternative service and was married then, and did service for a couple of years, and then I
came back. I ended up graduating in 1972.

JT: Who was teaching art then?

PE: Bob Regier, Paul Friesen, and Mike Almanza.

Ami Regier: So what happened next? How did you find your way into a life of art?

PE: Well, then I went looking for a job as a teacher and stayed with that for 30 some
years. Yes, I was always an art teacher. Then, a lot of times the question came up, should
I get my master's? I always kind of balked. First of all, I didn't want to. I didn't want to
go to school. I didn't want to spend the time or money or energy. Now, this being my
first year of retirement, I've thought oftentimes that people plan only for their careers,
but they don't plan beyond their careers. So I'm really kind of glad I didn't get my
master's. That energy went into art. Working on art took the energy that I had.

JT: What relationship was there in your experience between teaching middle-school art
and the art that you're actually producing on your own?

PE: In the earlier years of my teaching career, I often connected the two. In the second
half, I deliberately separated the two. They were two different worlds. They were kind of nice
because my skills continued to be in practice, because I was working with students and
art and all that, so they supported each other pretty well, but I didn't usually blend them.
I didn't bring my work into the classroom for years. When the work started selling, I also
became worried about conflict of interest. For instance, what if I did a painting
demonstration in class, and then later sold it? I thought I could get in trouble with it some
way or another, so I kept them pretty separate.

JT: For many art teachers, it is very difficult to be active in producing their own work.
How did that turn out differently for you?

PE: It was always my interest and passion, and I had ideas to express. It was where I
could best express myself, so I just always did it. I was always interested. I think a lot of
people are experimental with their art work, especially teachers: they want to dabble in
various media and see what happens in each. I focused on the image.
Later I got more interested in sculptural media, but I always knew I was a painter.
Lately, I've become more interested in the 3-dimensional aspect.

II. Public Art

AR: I've come to the conclusion, and I want to check it with you, that I think you seem
to be in a new stage in your art where you're placing your art in public contexts, in some
cases in the landscape, or in very public civic areas that cause the human community to
have a new relationship with art. I'd like to know how you think the human community
interacts with your art.

PE: Yes, this art is recent, actually. Most of the projects have been cooperative projects
with other artists, and that has been a new experience. So those two things, working
with public art, and working cooperatively with other artists, have developed in the
last three-four years. I think part of that came about because of my interest in sculpture.
Here's the idea: my interest in sky as open space or openness. It's you with the
natural landscape, just the juxtaposition of the artificial and the natural, when the
artificial represents the natural.

AR: I do think about that [the artificial/natural juxtaposition] every time I see the Blue
Sky Project.

PE: I thought of this the other day: I had the sketch I did 20 years ago: it was just a skyscape that was in front of some foliage—a hole you could cut out of a foliage and see
the sky. That image and what you could do with solid sky, interested me.

You had asked how the projects came about. Terry Corbett (ceramic tile artist,
Wichita, KS) and I had done a ceramic tile wall mural in Eldorado, KS, about five years
ago. And then we did a small mural together here on Main Street, [above the Scrapbook
Gallery at 504 N. Main] and Terry Corbett has been involved in most of these projects.
We worked together on most of these things, and they [the owners] determined what they
wanted.

Mural in El Dorado, Kansas. In a very narrow alley just north of the Coutts art museum on Main Street.(photo by John D. Thiesen)

And then the Blue Sky project came up, and that was a monumental project. It
was an eye-opener for all kinds of things.

AR: How did you have the courage to propose Blue Sky Project to the municipality?

PE: That's one of the lessons: have a lot of coffee. I
think the artist has to be the aggressor, because art isn't something that people necessarily
prioritize. So I have a somewhat aggressive attitude, and the galleries I've dealt with have required an
aggressive attitude. Survival: You can't be passive in art and survive. Subtlety
doesn't cut it as far as art is concerned.

My approach is that I develop a model, and show a potential audience what I want to
do, and if it doesn't happen, I still have this wonderful idea that I developed. And it
doesn't really matter whether they accept it or they don't; we went through the process
of the model and anr idea, and we're making art the way we hoped to make it. And so
I got on that kick: we made the model. We proposed it to a committee, and there were
some helpful people who wanted to see it come about. Blue Sky project was
initially tied to the baseball diamond on First Street. That was an interesting phenomena:
the sports complex was eventually cut, but the art project was pretty much committed, so
the foundation had changed. That's when we got the place over there (the current site on
Kansas Avenue by Centennial Park). That was a long process.

JT: In some ways, my feeling was that the Athletic Park location [on First Street] was
more central and more visible. Aesthetically, the new location may be better because it is
more open.

PE: I like this location. Aesthetically, it is a better location. Also, the ideal was to have
this thing sky against sky, and that happens here. But some people thought it ought to
be more central, or on the highway where people would see it more frequently.

AR: Once the Blue Sky Project began to be tied into the signage in the community,
perhaps there is potential to cause a recentering of the community. This site would
become a kind of center.

PE: That's kind of what we were thinking. Some little things, that happened not because
of this, nevertheless have contributed: the recent building projects including the Walgreens store, the Quick Trip, and development
this direction including some of those town houses [on Twelfth Street], have increased the urban density neary the project.

Another reason, the [current] location [is important]: . .Well, back up. . .in the
whole process [of the discussion of Blue Sky project], some contact with the Sand Creek
restoration project by the corps of engineers developed. There was an archeologist who
came down from Arizona, and I got to know him, and he would take me around. He was
intrigued by the [current] location; he said there were four distinct civilizations that lived
in the area. Native Americans, 500 years ago: it was a real hub. Then it was the initial land fill 100 years ago [for
Newton]. The third stage was the landfill 30 years ago, covered, and then, fourth, the current
culture and use.

Then he was really intrigued with how this is the perfect spot to show what
happens with rivers. First, trade and commerce and so on, and then it turned into this
waste area-dumping ground, then the recreational area reclaims the waste area.

JT: The site could become an archeological park, with an excavation.

PE: That's another thing we talked about: some sort of excavation with a space to walk
through with both sides lined with plexiglass to see the layers; rubbish, etc.

JT: That would be another kind of thing for the people who are against most projects to
react to. How do you respond to that political aspect of public art? I'm asking both about the political aspect of public art in general, in almost any situation, but
certainly it's prominent here in Newton because there's an anti-faction in this
community.

PE: The anti-faction is raising objections to almost everything. I suppose there are
people not in the anti-faction who would be against public art because they would see it
as a low priority. I'm on the side of public art, plain and simple. I think it's important. I
think that a lot of people can get some use out of it. A lot of it [its value] isn't immediate.
Down the road, people will see it as pretty neat.

JT: Do you think that Harvey County has a deficit of public art, or are we typical?

PE: We probably are typical, but the sculpture that we did kicked it up quite a ways
because of the scale.

JT: How did the use of your characteristic clouds become part of the city signage logo?

PE: Very simply. They were working on that in the city manager's office, and they were
going to make some signs. I said, I'll make a painting for you if you want, so I went
home that afternoon and made a little painting, and brought it in the next day or two days
later. She asked what size they were going to be. There are
many signs now. I really like them. I didn't get
anything out of it, but I thought it would be more detrimental in the long run to have poor
signage.

Newton city directional sign based on Phil Epp design;this one is north of 12th and Main.(photo by John D. Thiesen)

JT: The Blue Sky Project is a bit different from the other projects because it involved the
city. How did the other projects evolve?

PE: The little mural above the Scrapbook Gallery was commissioned by the owner.
Terry Corbett was interested in it, even though it was a small project and can't be seen
from directly below, and is a little more literal in interpretation. There's a train motif
because of the history of the Santa Fe Chief train line, which was also the name of the
theater that once occupied that very building. It used to be called the Chief Theater, and the history was important. Dick
McCall owns the building, and he was one of the most influential people behind Blue
Sky.

PE: No, he keeps a low profile, but he's very persistent, with a strong interest in Newton,
and doing whatever he can to help this place. He was hands-down the biggest influence
besides Lloyd Smith, who provided the funds for it.

Another project now developing is the City of Olathe project ("Reflective Spaces", R. R. Osborne Plaza Sculpture): it's a public
art project that is exciting in a lot of ways. It's another sculpture. [Gesturing] this is the
initial model we presented. It was interesting how it came about. The agent wanted us to
do basically two slabs in mural form. I didn't want to make a flat surface, in a three-dimensional park, like a billboard with pictures on it. Sitting in a meeting, I had an idea
to separate these things in this way. It will be more of a landscape, an Olathe landscape . .
. The thing that makes it interesting to me is that the pieces bisect the landscape at angles;
they aren't going to be flat. Light will hit them different ways at different times, with
stones and sky and stuff in between the images. With the
base it will be 17-18 feet tall.

PE: This was a compromise. They wanted landscape, so we had to do landscape. The
twist comes in, in my opinion, here: the idyllic landscape, which is the way the
land looks like west of Olathe, but now, with all the urban development, the landscape has
a fragmented look. To me, this works as an art piece because the fragmentation is honest.

AR: The fragments are true to the landscape as it has been developed.

PE: The form of fragmentation is symbolic in a lot of ways.

JT: The obvious thing I would say about it, as a non-artist, is that you don't generally
make a habit of drawing trees.

PE: Right. But notice these are interesting trees - they look like dark green clouds.
[Laughs.] The same shape as my clouds.

[All of us now moved to another table in the studio to examine a model.]

AR: This must be the model for another new project you are now developing, at the
Newton Medical Center, in the rotunda of the new Medical Office Plaza.

PE: This was the space, and I made a lot of quick decisions on how to deal with it. The
first idea was to make one landscape that would go all the way around, but I didn't like
that idea much. So I ended up with a variety of landscapes, all different, but at different
times of day or in different seasons. There is a little bit of a method to it: the images are
of things you would associate with northern or southern or southwest views, sundown,
sunrise, but I'm not trying to necessarily make it a decorative interior design piece that
fits nicely on the wall. There are eight different paintings, and there will be a little border.

JT: Entrance?

PE: Rotunda area.

JT: Is this space behind up against the wall?

PE: It will come away from the wall, leaving about 3-4 inches of space. It's not
freestanding, there is building around here. Open, 3-4 are doors. Basically open space,
another floor above, plus a skylight above. This is the scale: 6 foot person.

I think it will be nice. I think it will be pretty neat. Mark Andres is working on the
structure, using masonite structures for the paintings.. Round space creates problems: you
can't stretch canvas on concave surface. I think we're either going to use adhesive to
attach the canvas, or we may not use canvas at all.

What do you think about the idea of having different paintings? Does your eye
want to see the same motif all the way around?

JT: The fact that it is broken up into segments by its structure [since the hospital space not a continuous
space] makes it logical that there would be different images. If the hospital rotunda itself
were one unbroken surface, it might make sense to blend around.

PE: Then I think whether I want the design to take over my work. However, this is where
I'm at right now. Some pieces I really like right now include the night sky. I want some
variation. A dramatic landscape next to a more subtle one. I want to break it up.

III. Subject Matter and "the Social Link": Categories and Questions

JT: There are two other directions of questions I might note: One would be to ask about artists who aren't well known but who might well be good artists; for example, Vernon Friesen is an artist in Henderson, Nebraska,
and is not widely known in galleries, yet does interesting bronzes, somewhat in the Frederic Remington tradition. One direction of questions would
be whether we can name and identify Mennonite artists, and what is the difference between those who are well known and less known. We might think of others whom we should interview in the future in
Mennonite Life. The other set of questions occurs to me as we try to put this article together
for Mennonite Life: Do you have any reflections as we put the two categories together,
"artist," and "Mennonite," do they have any significance, or are they purely coincidental?

PE: Vernon Friesen was a friend of mine growing up. He was a year younger than me. I
can't think of too many other Mennonite artists in the region: Robert Regier, Arlie
Regier, Paul Friesen, Conrad Snider.

That's a great question. I have seen several publications describing a
body of Mennonite art. My work as well as some of the other work I've seen in them
seemed pretty weak to me. It's either pretty academic, or it's just flat. Lacking in energy.
It's either academic, coming right out of school and doesn't usually go beyond that, or
it's based in the past. That's not true of all; I've also seen amazing stuff. Again, part of it is. . . well, you go back to how the visual arts have just not been promoted very much. I
don't want to blame the religious aspect, but it goes back to the graven image problem, I
suppose . . .

AR: Perhaps it's time for a renaissance now.

PE: Perhaps, in that area. I think Mennonites
have a tendency to do things in a practical fashion rather than pushing the envelope (in terms of scale and aggressiveness). The primary push is toward human services. . . . Mennonites and art. We had difficulty
coming up with a list of names: we only came up with a few.

AR: Do you currently have a congregational home?

PE: Yes, First Mennonite, but we are not very active.

JT: Is it an art friendly congregation?

PE: I'm not too interested in hanging out with art-friendly Mennonites. This is why I like
the regionalists. I
don't expect to go to church and talk about art. I'm not even a fan of people performing
in church. I don't even necessarily think it's appropriate for people to perform in church. I like the people, and I like the church, and I have a lot of respect for them, and I'm not sure why we don't go. We'll probably go
back again sometime soon.

JT: Does the phrase "Mennonite artist" or "Mennonite art" make any sense?

PE: It would be like the phrase "Native American art." It's more nostalgic, than it is
anything else.1 What is Mennonite, anyway? We go to strip malls and shopping malls and
everything like everyone else anyway. I don't know. Would the art be a place to find a
Mennonite identity?

AR: I very much appreciate the idea that it's problematic to claim exactly what a
Mennonite is. Literary writers /novelists currently keep complicating what identity is.

JT: It's interesting that you mention the phrase "Native American art" when thinking of
Mennonite art, to compare, because there you can see a stereotype of nostalgic or cheaply
popularized form of art, but on the other hand, you would find artists who are Native
American and would say that aspect of their identity is something they bring to their
artwork in some way. There's a variety of ways you can think about binding the adjective
to art and artists.

PE: I can't think of many Mennonite artists.

JT: Another name that's been brought up in the area is Nathan Hart. He has been
influenced by both Cheyenne and Mennonite backgrounds.

PE: This is what I find at school. Everything is related to ethnicity. And the fact that his
art would be intriguing because it would have to do with both Mennonite and Cheyenne backgrounds.
But is his art any good? I'm just skeptical. When periodicals feature artists because a
figure is African American, the artist is significant because of being African American.
That's fine, but I would like to see the art come first. The other aspect is incidental, the
political correctness of the background. What do you think?

AR: I'm interested in hybrid definitions of identity that stretch beyond historical
definitions, if I'm to figure out how to live and work at a Mennonite institution. I'm
interested in the problems that surround the question, because I find myself
uncomfortable with narrow definitions of `Mennonites' while working at a Mennonite
institution. I also think that ethnicity is one viable category with which to track historical
angles and influences, but I agree that it can have unfortunate nostalgic effects.

JT: What I would say is that identity isn't a property but rather a process by which a person identifies, but also,
what others identify that person with, so it's interesting to look into or under the various
ways people identify being part of a certain category. So when odd or unusual
combinations occur, then I'm curious if there's any significance to those combinations of
categories in how these people identify themselves or are identified, categorized by
others.

PE: We keep bringing it back to the social link, but I think art making is a little bit
removed from the social aspect. I don't want to emphasize social service images in my art.

JT: Another way of asking a parallel question would be something along the lines of
replacing the ethnic adjective with a geographical adjective. Are you a Plains artist or a
Southwestern artist? Are you a Nebraska or Kansas artist?

PE:That's more important. That's a good point.

[Gesturing]: Painting-wise, this is a painting with substance, and some sense of
human reaction, but no pin-pointable references to native American or Mennonite
elements.

AR: You're saying these paintings are not so much about cultural ideas.

PE: Human presences, but not specific ones. More rural ones, if anything. I'm a rural artist.

JT: [Gesturing to a painting]: Thinking of geography, realism and so on, this painting
jumps out at as more Eastern New Mexico. Not Nebraska or central Kansas.

PE: I grew up overlooking a big basin, a low land area where water would collect. We
had a quarter section pasture. Prairie, actually: it was different from a pasture. No
buildings for a few miles. Pretty open space; I always liked the plains. I can see that this
painting does look a bit more like eastern New Mexico; most of the time I don't really
identify them as belonging to a certain place. They develop as their own location. Usually
they have a little mix of New Mexico and Kansas in them.

Epp home in Henderson today(photo provided by Phil Epp)

Epp home in Henderson today(photo provided by Phil Epp)

[Gesturing to another painting]: This one is about back side of a sign, a billboard,
a perfect structure, set against a landscape. At first it was against a vibrant skyscape, but
they were conflicting so I deadened back the sky. This one is interesting because it kind
of makes the viewer ask what is on the other side, what it is advertising, but it doesn't
offer any clues. It is interesting visually.

Billboard, 30x40(photo provided by Phil Epp)

AR: There is something ironic and funny about painting the back of a billboard.

You're looking at another kind of space, not organized by regional geography. The
billboard is set by a cliff, like a billboard at the end of the world, but even then you can't
see what's on it.

Post Hole Digger(photo provided by Phil Epp)

PE: I don't mean anything negative. Does it do what I want it to do? I began a close-up
of a post-hole digger. It's almost a pop art image, or something like one. I did another
painting of an old car with a lighted Christmas star on top, from Burns, Kansas. I like
those kinds of images that have the capacity to be symbolic.

Box Car, 24x30(photo provided by Phil Epp)

AR: Christmas stars and old cars: On the one hand, I sense in your work a little bit of
the sacred landscape, but on the hand also a little bit of surrealism, a little bit of pop art. The
Blue Sky sculpture seems to share the ethos of Rene Magritte's famous This is Not a
Pipe, by putting an image of a sky up against a sky.

PE: Yes, there's a certain sense of humor.

JT: It is a surrealist image to cut a hole in foliage to see the sky.

PE: Magritte did some of that too. Also, everything that I've done has been in some way
or other before. Wayne Thiebaud is a California artist that is still living, that had images of
pies in a glass pie case. He currently has a show at the Kemper Museum [in Kansas City,
MO].

I like looking at billboard signs. The structure of it is what I find interesting: the
front side is all smooth and shiny, and now they're even covered with vinyl that wraps
around and ties up, so they don't even paint them any more. But the back side has all
kinds of different structures. Next time you go to a major highway, just look at the back
sides. Brace supports. They are almost always tacky, as if they didn't measure them.
Some of them have a real elaborate structure; what keeps them up in that wind is
amazing. Sometimes you just do things for fun. This one I did for fun.

IV. Let's Talk about Kansas Art: Influences, History, and Teter Rock

JT: Another angle of question we started on before a bit when we talked about less known artists such as Vernon Friesen, and also when you said before about
art with ethnic labels on it that you want to ask, is it good art?

PE: You want to ask me, "What is good art?"

JT: No, it's more political than that. What sort of status hierarchy in the art world is
your involvement? If I go to Taos, and walk around in galleries, and I see a Phil Epp
painting, I think that is supposed to impress me, and I think he must be a really important artist. But as a non-artist I don't really
know whether I'm seeing important art. Two things are going on here: What's
good art, and what's the status hierarchy, among people who are knowledgeable about
art, who buy and sell art?

PE: That's a good question, but I'm not sure how to answer it. There are several status
tiers. First there are really significant artists with well-known names. Then there would
be another group of artists with New York connections. So there are several levels of art.
Status? Is that your question?

JT: Yes, does status have to do with how good the art is; how does that relate to how
people relate to the art world and art market?

PE: You could say that there are five tiers of significant art, based on visual impact or
even price. Or you could say there are two or three. I think there are regional groups.

JT: There is a hierarchy at the national level, and then another one in the category of
Southwestern artists if that's how people label you.

PE: There would even be a hierarchy of Kansas artists.

JT: I doubt if people come in from the outside and say that they want a Kansas painting,
— or maybe they do—I don't know. They might come in and say they want Southwest
art.

PE: Even Kansas art has a long history. People just go nuts over Birger Sandzen
paintings now. There are paintings by him that are worth a quarter of a million dollars
now. Let's talk about Kansas art.

[All of us now moved to the library adjacent to the studio. In February-May 2000, the Kauffman Museum in North Newton, Kansas, had an exhibit titled "Drawn from the Plains: American Regionalist Art, 1925-1950" which featured prints, drawings, and paintings from the Phil and Karen Epp collection, some of which were on display in the library.]

Here is a Kansas magazine from the 1930s. Art was pretty significant in the 1930s
here through the community murals by the WPA and that sort of thing. This is an early
record of some of the early Kansas artists (from the turn of the century and on.)

[Looking at books:] Here's another significant book on the effect of the realists
on the state—Thomas Hart Benton, John Stuart Curry. The "prairie printmakers" were
Wichita-based and also joined with artists throughout the country. Kansas was a pivotal
place in the country for people making prints in the 1930s. People from Taos would come
up and have artwork printed here. A number of publications have come out of KU on
Grant Wood, Sandzen, Curry, Benton.

AR: What are the particular lines of Kansas art that have influenced you?

PE: All the realists influenced me,2 among other influences: Benton, Curry. And there was some overlap: Ward
Lockwood was a New Mexico artist who was born in Kansas. He was a significant New
Mexico artist. He came to Kansas, started abstraction, from a pretty realistic starting
point. He has Kansas roots. Quite a few of the New Mexico artists have Kansas roots.
Part of that has to do with the Santa Fe railroad and just the intrigue with the Southwest.
But there's quite a connection between the Southwest and Kansas art. Many of these were swallowed up by modernism. Others adapted and updated their realism to modernism.

AR: I recognize Teter Rock [looking at a painting by Phil Epp leaning against a wall].

Teter Rock, 40x30 acrylic on board(photo provided by Phil Epp)

Teter Rock, north face, Dec. 2003, Greenwood County, Kansas(photo by John D. Thiesen)

Teter Rock, south face, Dec. 2003(photo by John D. Thiesen)

View southwest from Teter Rock, Dec. 2003(photo by John D. Thiesen)

PE: I have to tell you a story about Teter Rock. Two-three weeks ago, a Chicago dealer
came through, who handles some of my work, but who handles mostly older stuff,
regionalist, too. An urbanite, intrigued about the Midwest, partly because of the
art he deals in. I thought I'd take him to Teter Rock, 20 miles east of Cassoday.

It was a Sunday afternoon, one of those hundred-degree days.
We walked around. Then we went back to the car, but it wouldn't start. We hadn't seen a
human being all afternoon, and were 20-30 miles from Cassoday. We hadn't seen another
car since we left Cassoday.

We didn't have cell phones or anything, but the reality hadn't hit me that we really
might be stuck out here. I finally realized I was using my wife's car key to the other car.
Finally we made it back, but I don't think he'll speak to me again. You don't think about
some place being remote until you're stranded.

I'll show you
some of these others [Kansas artists]. This is Curry, the one who has the statehouse
murals. Here's someone else I really like, William Dickerson. I think he'll be getting
some press in the next few years; the agent from Chicago was interested in his work. He
was a real genuine kind of realist; he really was interested in Kansas. His prints are just
wonderful.

This is Dale Nichols - not a Kansas artists particularly. Most of these people
work with this prairie group of artists. That was an influential piece: "Cloud," by John
Roger Cox. I did some research on him in an art history class at WSU. Interesting
individual, with quite a bit of turmoil in his life: he ended up being an alcoholic. Dealers
are more and more interested in rural imagery. I think that, like Southwest Art, Kansas is
gaining a lot of interest, partly because of its history in art.

This painting here is another one of those original prairie printmakers, but this one
is a little more modernist. Modernism pretty much shut most of them down. They were
working in a regionalist mode, and then abstraction ruled from 1950 to the present,
practically.

It's just now that they are going back and digging out this stuff that got stuffed
away during that time. This little painting I just got recently is by Lester Raymer, another
important Kansas artist. Have you been to the Red Barn
Studio in Lindsborg? You've got to go. In many ways he was a lot better as a painter than
Sandzen. He did a lot of religious subject matter too, so he'd be an interesting one to
study. He died in 1991.

AR: This is quite a collection of Kansas art you've got here.

PE: Yes, it keeps growing and changing a little bit.

AR: How does your process work? How much time do you spend out in the landscape?
Do you take photos?

PE: I take a lot of photos. I don't usually paint on location. I draw on location some
times. Then I come back and concoct it, based on what I know, what I like to see,
and what's expected of the picture, or what's going on at the time.

AR: How would you describe how the landscape works for you compositionally? How
did the low horizon line and gradations of colors in the sky evolve?

PE: Those aspects evolved and became refined over the years. Depth is created by
darker color at top of the composition. When teaching art, one is always teaching
perspective. That affected my work. The low horizon gets you kind of looking up. Low
horizon is something that, talking about Kansas and Midwestern painters, influenced me
in the 1970s. I remember Keith Jacobshagen, who I met once or twice. He was an instructor at
Nebraska, and was one of the first artists that I remember shoving the horizon line way
down. I remember going to one of his shows at Ruben Saunders Gallery in Wichita and
thinking wow, that's pretty neat. And so, I think that's where I started shoving the
landscape down. He was a part of a school of landscape painters at the time, and he did
that. It worked for me to shove the horizon line down quite a ways because it became
more about sky than about land.

JT: Would a person who is not from the plains say that it intimidates the viewer?

PE: You mean the sky [intimidates the viewer]?

JT: Because the viewer has to look up at the monolith (Blue Sky Project) or the sky?

PE: I don't know. It might not seem natural for some viewers. It might seem long to
some viewers. Compositions are more usually divided into thirds.

AR: How is retirement?

PE: It gives me time to get stuff done, but I'm not really retired. I have to make this art
work. I'm not in a position to sit back and not be productive.

JT: How did you make the decision to retire?

PE: Early retirement was the obvious option, so I could continue to earn a portion of my
salary, which was wonderful. I wasn't burned out: I was tired of the
same activities. Later on I felt I was on a treadmill. Now it's kind of like I just graduated
from college.

International Congress of Women.

Boeckel, Between War and Peace. p. 302.

Ibid. p. 302.

Key, Ellen, War, Peace and the Future p. 237.

Two very useful books for the study of Peace are: The Turn toward Peace, (Macmillen) and Between War and Peace. (Friendship Press) by Florence Brewer Boeckel.

Taken from the fascinating story "MEN IN WAR" by Andreas Latzko. p. 40. Boni and Liveright, N. Y.

Boeckel. Between War and Peace. pp. 415-508.

Church School Magazine, Dec. 1933, p. 704.

Van Kirk. Highways to International Goodwill.

Ami Regier

Ami Regier is former associate professor of English at Bethel College.

John D. Thiesen

John Thiesen is archivist at the Mennonite Library and Archives and co-director of libraries at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas.

Notes

In a later conversation with Phil Epp, he noted that scholarly articles about his work sometimes participate in the problem he names here by framing his identity and work in a nostalgic sense. See the treatment of Mennonite identity and history in "Phil Epp" by Franz Brown, Southwest Art (June 1997): 90-95. For a less problematic treatment, he recommends a later article by the same writer: "Cloudscapes and Open Spaces: The Art of Phil Epp," Taos Magazine (August 1999): 16-18.

Phil Epp noted that he researched Kansas art history and became more influenced by the realists later in his career, and thus identifies them in this interview as influences in the last few years of his work. His earlier influences include a wide range of artists, including the minimalists and color field artists who developed as dimensions of abstract expressionism. For example, the color fields of Mark Rothko paintings offer a precedent for the abstract quality of landscape and giant color field of the sky in Phil Epp's paintings. Phil cited two contemporary artists who have been important influences: Richard Serra (minimalist American sculptor) and James Turrell (minimalist, American, Quaker installation artist). Turrell's work shares a focus in what he describes as "skyscapes" with Phil Epp's compositions; his work on the geography and sky space of Roden Crater can be viewed online. In addition, Robert Regier continues to be an influential colleague.